The missing train with Nazi gold. The legendary German “golden train” may have been found in the mountains of southwestern Poland. Why Poland doesn't want to share
There are many rumors and legends about Nazi gold. Historians, journalists and professional treasure hunters are still engaged in fierce debate about where the gold bars of the Third Reich disappeared. After all, the Allies, having occupied Nazi Germany, found only empty bank vaults there.
The version that Hitler Germany completely squandered its gold reserves in last years war, has now been completely refuted by serious scientific research. However, 70 years after the collapse of the Third Reich, only a small part of the missing treasures was found. The Nazis carefully collected gold throughout Europe and had no intention of squandering it. The chief treasurer of the NSDAP, Martin Bormann, declared the Reich's gold an emergency reserve, its strategic reserve. And this reserve by the end of the war, according to American experts, amounted to 400-500 billion dollars in modern prices.
In addition to German gold itself, it included captured gold reserves of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Hungary, Romania and part of Poland. Even in the Soviet Union, the Nazis managed to profit and seize three wagons with gold in Ukraine, which Gokhran employees did not have time to evacuate. 120 tons of gold were handed over to the Germans “for safekeeping” by Benito Mussolini, 100 tons by the Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic. To this we must add gold confiscated from private banks, jewelry stores, confiscated church valuables and other “trifles.” In general, as it was said in one popular novel, the client had money and a lot of money.
At the end of 1944, at the proposal of German Finance Minister Walter Funk, it was decided to evacuate the Reich's gold reserves. Trains with gold were sent to inaccessible mountainous regions of Bavaria and Austria. Various caches and hiding places were equipped there. Some of the valuables were hidden at the bottom mountain lakes. Just in the vicinity of the Austrian town of Bad Aussee, dozens of wagons with tons of gold, kilograms of platinum and diamonds were unloaded. Three carriages with gold from the banks of Soviet Ukraine disappeared near Lake Altsee. The gold from the “Mussolini reserve” was taken out by a special SS command, and traces of it were lost at the Bad Ischl station.
It is curious that this operation was supervised by the well-known SS Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny. He was arrested by an American patrol just in the area of Lake Toplitzsee on May 16, 1945. During interrogations, Skorzeny pointed out some hiding places to the Americans, but three years later he successfully escaped from a prisoner of war camp and ended up in Spain, visiting dictator Franco. The Spaniards categorically refused to extradite Otto Skorzeny. And it’s clear why. He knew a lot about the hidden treasures of the Third Reich, and seems to have generously shared this information with the Spaniards.
On the other hand, the Nazis were not naive people and would not put all their eggs in one basket. They transferred a certain part of the gold and platinum to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile through Swiss banks and the same Spain.
According to some modern researchers, even the Vatican helped the Nazis transfer gold to South American banks, of course not selfishly. Later, this gold was used by numerous war criminals, as well as the German diaspora living in Latin American countries. According to one version, part
gold was exported to submarines and hidden in remote areas of Chile, Argentina and even Antarctica.
The German Society for Polar Research explored Antarctica at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1939, a German expedition discovered the ice-free and completely habitable Schirmacher Oasis there. After the end of World War II, there was a myth that it was there that the surviving Hitler and other Nazi leaders were hiding.
This, of course, is unlikely, but it was quite possible to hide gold and other valuables there.
Both individuals and entire states searched for the missing treasures of the Third Reich. Back in August 1945, the Potsdam Conference decided that the gold reserves of Nazi Germany should be divided between the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France. Some of the gold was found, as they say, without delay. So, on May 11, 1945, in a tunnel near Salzburg, American soldiers discovered a train with Hungarian gold. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the Americans took most of the bars for themselves.
Some jewelry was returned to the Hungarians, including their National treasure- the crown of St. Stephen. There, in Austria, in abandoned wells, 20 tons of marked gold from the Croatian dictator Pavelic were discovered. But the remaining 80 tons disappeared somewhere.
Today, Reich gold is found completely by accident and sometimes in the most unexpected places. In the summer of 1983, two tourists discovered an abandoned house in the forest near the town of Bad Aussee. The walls of the building turned out to be made of Reichsbank gold bars, painted brick brown. The cost of such a “villa” was tens of millions of dollars. And in Lake Toplitzsee, at a depth of one hundred meters, scuba divers found and brought to the surface six boxes of gold.
By 2000, 329 tons of gold belonging to the Nazis had been discovered. But this is only a fifth of the disappeared treasures of the Reich. They say that from time to time, gold “bricks” with a swastika and the inscription Deutsche Reichsbank appear on the black market, which are very popular among collectors.
In 2015, in Poland, two treasure hunters found a train with 300 tons of gold, diamonds, and pearls in an abandoned mountain tunnel. In the vicinity of the town of Walbrzych. The lucky guys, through lawyers, handed over the coordinates of the high-profile find to the authorities, demanding 10 percent of the value of the treasure. The exact location has not been disclosed. The Walbrzych authorities held a press conference, essentially confirming the sensation. Have they really found the precious composition? They have been looking for the train since 1945!
“Legends about the golden echelon have been circulating in these parts since the end of World War II,” said historian of the Third Reich Konstantin Zalessky. - It’s not for nothing that the “Gold of Breslau” was included in the book “100 Great Treasures”.
- What does Breslau have to do with it? Walbrzych appears in the news.
— Walzbich is located in Lower Silesia. It passed to Poland after the war. Before that, it was a German land with the capital of Breslau (now the Polish city of Wroclaw). Rich German landowners and aristocrats lived here for a long time. They had gold. Breslau went down in the history of World War II as the German Brest. Since February 1945, Soviet troops tried to take the fortress city. But he capitulated only on May 6. The defense was led by Gauleiter SS Obergruppenführer Karl Hanke, the Fuhrer's favorite.
This Hanke apparently sent an armored train with gold to Berlin (or somewhere else) at the end of 1944 or at the beginning of 1945, realizing that the city was about to be surrounded by Soviet troops. The train left Breslau towards Waldenburg (present-day Walbrzych). But he didn’t reach the station. According to one version, a secret train entered a tunnel near the Ksenzh castle and... disappeared. In those parts, the Nazis built a whole system of tunnels. According to another version, he was driven under Mount Sobes near the town of Pelersdorf, where there was an underground military plant. There was also a railway there. The supposedly valuable cargo was hidden in adits and tunnels. According to the third version, the gold was hidden under Mount Snezka in the Sudetes.
The search for the golden train of the Third Reich in those parts began immediately after the war. Black diggers also searched for treasures in numerous dungeons in Wroclaw, but to no avail.
- Do you believe in the find?
— Everything is arranged too seriously. Both the law firm and the press conference of the Walzbich authorities. This is not a bluff. Please note what the representative of the Polish Ministry of Culture, Piotr Zukowski, said the other day: “I urge that all searches be stopped until the completion of the official procedure aimed at ensuring the safety of this find... The hidden train, the existence of which I have no doubt, may contain hazardous materials from World War II war. There is a high probability that the train is mined." What doubts can there be here? Found!
The train carried masterpieces from museums
- And what could be there?
— Possibly, valuables looted by the Nazis in countries of Eastern Europe, in USSR. Gold, coins, diamonds... I don't exclude ancient treasures. In Breslau there was the famous Royal Museum of Art and Antiquities (now - National Museum Wroclaw), other museums. There, in 1944, the Nazis brought collections from Berlin and other cities, since Breslau had not yet been bombed. Museum curator Günter Grundmann was responsible for the evacuation of all the treasures at the end of the war from Gauleiter Hanke. He managed to take out some of the valuables, and hid some in local castles and mines. According to his inventory, the Polish authorities after the war found about 80 such burials in Lower Silesia. But many of Breslau's museum treasures have not yet surfaced. Perhaps they are in this armored train. However, let's not guess. Let's wait for official announcements. The wait won't be long.
— Is this train the last high-profile discovery from World War II?
- Yes you! Let us recall, for example, the priceless Amber Room, stolen by the Nazis in Tsarskoye Selo. To this day, enthusiasts are looking for it in Kaliningrad, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. There are many legends about Nazi treasures in the Austrian Alps, where at the end of the war the Fuhrer created a special fortified area. There really are a lot of things hidden in mines, tunnels, and at the bottom of lakes. Lake Toplitzsee acquired gloomy fame. It seems that the Nazis dropped a lot of mysterious boxes here. Many amateur scuba divers have died trying to find them. 16 boxes were found. But there were... fake banknotes. Many caches from World War II are still waiting for their treasure hunters.
Historical sensation - a train was allegedly found in Poland, which in 1945 underground tunnel hidden by the retreating fascists. Historians believe that its carriages may contain a cargo of gold and precious stones taken by the Nazis from the occupied territories. And although no one knows exactly about the contents of the “golden armored train,” a dispute is already flaring up over who will get the treasure, which could amount to billions of dollars. Russia is also among the contenders.
Is it time to load up capital in barrels? Rumors that are nearby Polish city Walzbich hidden treasures of the Third Reich have long been discussed among professional treasure hunters. The surviving German documents gave them credibility. Among other things, they described a project to create an extensive network of underground weapons factories in Lower Silesia, the creation of which Hitler ordered in 1943 after the intensification of Allied air raids on German territory. The work was carried out by the military construction organization Todt, the secret project was called Riese (“Giant”). Over the course of a year, more than 9 kilometers of tunnels were dug in the Owl Mountains near Waldenburg, as Walzbich was called at that time. However, as it turned out, millions of Reichsmarks were wasted: soon the Red Army approached the borders of Silesia, and the idea of relocating factories had to be abandoned.
They searched for treasures, but did not find them
After the end of the war, the Polish authorities (presumably, not without the help of the Soviet intelligence services) were interested in the fate of the dungeons, the entrances to which the Nazis blew up during the retreat. In particular, an attempt was made to find out the fate of a train of 12 cars, which in the spring of 1945 left Breslau (present-day Polish Wroclaw) in the direction of Waldenburg, but did not arrive at its destination. The information available about the composition suggested that the armored train was transporting significant material assets. But either the competent authorities ultimately considered this information unconfirmed, or the investigation reached a dead end, but over the years the “golden armored train” turned into a legend that was of interest only to adventurers.
However, as it now turns out, Warsaw did not lose hope of sudden enrichment. In 1995, the Polish Ministry of Finance agreed with a certain treasure hunter, who promised to find the German train, to transfer to him the 10th part of what was found. However, he was never able to discover the composition. This was done by two other amateur historians - a German and a Pole, who came to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland a month ago with sensational news. They brought with them photographs obtained using ground penetrating radar. “I’m 99% sure: the “golden train” exists!” – Having studied the presented materials, Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Pyotr Zhukhovsky joyfully stated.
The Jewish Congress demands its
I wonder if there is a proverb in Poland similar to the Russian one, which says that money loves counting? Not even a day had passed since Zhukhovsky’s statement when a queue began to form from applicants for the contents of the Nazi echelon. To begin with, lawyer Mikhail Ioffe, who previously represented Russia in international courts, told Sputnik radio that the property should be described and made available to the countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition. And if valuables were removed from the territory of the Soviet Union, then, according to international law, they must be transferred to the Russian side. Apparently, his words caused quite a stir in Warsaw. After all, no matter how you look at it, if gold was actually taken by the Nazis from the occupied lands of the USSR, it must be given back. Pyotr Zhukhovsky tried to give a rebuke - they say, according to our laws, the treasures will be transferred to the state treasury, but this sounded unconvincing. However, a new player suddenly appeared on the scene. As stated by the head of the World Jewish Congress, Robert Singer, the gold in the train could have originally belonged to Jews killed in concentration camps, and therefore the right to own it belongs to the heirs of those executed. But a problem arises - where to look for these heirs and how to now determine the owners of things? Singer has an answer: if leads cannot be found, the treasure should be given to an organization of Polish Jews who “were not compensated by the state for their suffering and economic losses during the Holocaust.”
Warsaw hides ends
But that's not all. The treasures of the “golden armored train” can be claimed by:
You won't believe it! - Germany. More precisely, a number of its citizens. The fact is that during the Second World War, the overwhelming majority of the population of Breslau were ethnic Germans. Shortly before the arrival of the Red Army, the city commandant issued a decree ordering city residents to hand over all their gold to the state bank. The order was carried out - this is known for certain. But where it went then, no one knows. Was this the cargo that was transported by the missing armored train?
As a result, an entertaining intrigue ensues, in which Poland, much to her chagrin, is given the place of the obviously losing side. After all, if you find treasures, she will get a big buck out of them. The rights to the treasure will be given either to Russia, or to Polish Jews, or to the descendants of Silesian Germans who fled to Germany. Therefore, the current steps of Warsaw look quite understandable: Piotr Zuchowski is officially forbidden from now on to say anything at all about the “golden train”, and the head of the Lower Silesia voivodeship, Tomasz Smolazz, has already stated that most likely there is in fact no treasure. So, a mistake arose, and the Ministry of Culture rushed to create a sensation. This is understandable: who wants to spend money on expensive excavations, so that later all the treasures will go to others. Well, the fact that the place where the train is supposed to be located is now under strict security doesn’t mean anything.
Look, in a month or two Poland will announce: they dug up, but they didn’t find anything. Who doubts that this is possible?
MEANWHILE
Should we expect that Russia can really get part of the treasures of the “golden armored train”? As you can see, the probability of this is not so high. Therefore, experts advise paying attention to similar treasures that are located on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Kaliningrad is considered the most promising place for seekers - former capital East Prussia. “When in the summer of 1944 the war approached the Prussian borders, work began in Koenigsberg and surrounding ancient castles, estates, monasteries, and churches to bury originally Prussian cultural and other valuables and those brought there during the war,” writes historian Alexander Masyakin. – By order of Gauleiter Koch, secret bunkers and hiding places were built there, where the “property of the Reich” that was looted during the war was to be hidden.
At the same time, Koch categorically forbade the export of anything outside of East Prussia. As a result, after the war, the valuables went to the Soviet Union. However, as historians believe, not all caches were found. According to historian Andrei Przhezdomsky, the dungeons of Kaliningrad may contain ancient icons and paintings by Russian and Western European artists, antique furniture, collections of artistic porcelain, sculptures from the palaces of Gatchina and Pavlovsk, as well as objects made of gold and silver. At the same time, and importantly, there is no need to worry about the safety of the exhibits - in accordance with a special plan, the rarities were covered with paraffin and packed in waterproof boxes that protected them from dampness.
However, finding treasures requires a lot of work and even more expense. The fact is that maps of the locations of underground bunkers have not been preserved. Not long ago, the entrance to one of them was accidentally discovered in the city center near the university building. Experts also suggest that Lyasha leads from the bunker of the last commandant of Königsberg to even deeper rooms. However, since the passages are flooded, it is impossible to get into them.
No less interesting place for treasure hunters is Crimea. It is reliably known that in the winter of 1944, the German transport “Laris” removed from Sevastopol valuables looted by the Germans from museums in the Crimea, as well as Kuban, Stavropol and the Rostov region. However, along the way, the ship was sunk by Soviet aircraft. If the site of Larisa's death is discovered, you can count on the return of a more than rich collection.
“There is a huge possibility that the train has been found,” said Piotr Zuchowski, State Secretary of the Polish Ministry of Culture. He urged private "treasure hunters" to refrain from searching on their own because the train's cargo could contain "unsafe materials" from World War II.
The authorities of the city of Walbrzych convened a press conference at which they announced that, according to the data they had, the train was definitely located within the administrative boundaries of the city (this was announced by the vice-mayor of the city, Zbigniew Nowaczyk). Who discovered the train nevertheless remains unknown. Only lawyers representing their interests attended the conference.
However, for now these are all messages concerning information that is not entirely clear, but is doomed in advance to sensationalism. The same noise could have arisen in Russia if, for example, he had declared confidence in the discovery of the Amber Room or Library. By the way, in the case of the Amber Room, such a statement might be worth making, since among the numerous versions about its possible location, there is an assumption that the room was also among the cargo of the “golden train” from Breslau.
Actually, everything that is known about the “golden train” is based only on the following recorded facts. At the end of 1944, on the eve of the Red Army's attack on Lower Silesia, which at that time was part of the Third Reich, the commandant of Breslau, the capital of this land, issued a decree ordering residents of the city to hand over all the gold and jewelry they had in their hands to the state bank. The townspeople actually complied with the orders of the military authorities. Soon, Soviet troops approached the city, and a siege and persistent months-long battles for the city began, ending only in the spring of 1945. During these battles, the city was subjected to large-scale destruction. After the war, it was not possible to find traces of gold stored in the city. The Soviet commandant’s office seemed to be trying to do this, but it did not lead to any clear results. Nevertheless, the assumption that before the complete encirclement of Breslau the gold could have been taken out of the city and hidden somewhere in Silesia seemed relatively plausible.
After the war, Lower Silesia was transferred to Poland, and Polish authorities continued the search for gold. The first assumption about where it could have gone appeared after the arrest in Poland in 1953 of Herbert Klose, a former Breslau police captain who lived in a Lower Silesian village using someone else’s documents. During interrogation by the security service, he said that he had witnessed the removal of gold and knew about the evacuation directions. True, in Klose’s version there was no talk of any train - the gold, according to his information, was loaded into boxes and taken out in a convoy of trucks in the direction of the Sudetenland (a mountainous area in the west of what is now the Czech Republic).
However, Klose’s information is a rather specific source. The arrest of the Polish state security in the early 1950s meant rather gloomy prospects for the former German policeman, who also served in the SS, and, trying to delay the trial, he gave more and more information about gold, regularly changing his testimony.
However, there is no other documentary evidence about the gold, except for the interrogation reports of the Breslau police officer.
Later, however, there were suggestions that the valuables were taken out railway. The train with 12 cars could have departed from Wroclaw in the direction of the city of Waldenburg, but never arrived at its destination station. In any case, this is how the legend sounds (it was impossible to document the departure and route of the train from the front-line city after the war; only scattered oral evidence remained). The composition, according to assumptions, could include, in addition to the gold of the residents of Breslau, also works of art stolen by the Nazis from European museums and private collections. Including, as mentioned above, the Amber Room.
What else can be said with certainty - in Lower Silesia there really was a place to hide the cargo. In the mining region on the border with the Czech Republic there were enough mines and underground passages. In addition, in the last years of the war, the Germans intended to turn the mountainous regions of Lower Silesia into a center for strategic industry and, possibly, some other secret facilities (here exact information again gives way to assumptions and sensations: in particular, it is customary to talk about “Hitler’s secret headquarters "and use other similar sensational definitions) and carried out extensive work there on the construction of tunnels and underground premises. The map of these structures has not yet been fully compiled and has long attracted various seekers of secrets (however, some of the underground passages have long become a tourist attraction). It is in these tunnels in the Owl Mountains near the city of Walbrzych (German name - Waldenburg) that those who believe in it tend to place the “golden train”.
The current round of talk surrounding the train began after the city of Walbrzych received a letter from two people - their names were never revealed to the public. We only know that one of the writers is Pole and the other is German. They announced that they had discovered the train and said that they would give the coordinates to someone who would guarantee them the value of 10% of the contents. It is worth noting: even those who found it emphasize that they do not know the contents of the cars, because... they are afraid that they may be mined. The authors of the letter describe the discovery as an armored train with anti-aircraft guns mounted on it. At the same time, according to them, jewelry and valuable ores can be seen in the carriages.
For reasons that are not yet entirely clear, the authorities of the city of Walbrzych considered the message serious (although they admit that they had previously regularly received oral messages on the same topic). The letter was sent to , State Property and Culture. Where yesterday came confirmation from one of the management members about “personal conviction” that the train had been found.
The anonymous discoverers of the train are not the first to try to obtain guarantees from the Polish authorities to receive money for information about the train supposedly immured in the Owl Mountains. In 1995, it even issued guarantees to a certain Wladyslaw Podisibirsky, an amateur archaeologist from Lower Silesia, to receive 10% of the value of valuables hidden in the train if discovered. True, then the searches were carried out secretly and they learned about the agreement much later.
It is impossible to speculate in advance about whether the discovery of the “golden train” is possible, or whether we are dealing with another link in this hopeless, but never ending chain of searches. The Germans actually built underground storage facilities and filled them with certain contents. Some experts have already suggested that even if some kind of storage facility is discovered, it is more likely to contain not gold, but, for example, a supply of tungsten - a strategic raw material for industrial production planned to be located in Lower Silesia. However, the words “dungeon”, “Third Reich”, “gold” and “Owl Mountains” create too beautiful a combination to struggle and search for.
Historians and treasure hunters throughout Europe are excited by the news from Poland. The legendary “golden train of the Third Reich” was allegedly found there.
70 years after the end of the war, there were persistent rumors that there was a certain train on which the Nazis tried to take looted wealth to Germany. Not a single confirmation, proof or evidence. And now - two unknown men are ready to provide his exact coordinates.
Southwestern Poland, mountainous region on the border with the Czech Republic. It was here that a priceless train was allegedly discovered - the German "golden train" from the Second World War. Not a single documentary evidence of its existence has been found. But there is a legend according to which the Nazis, fleeing from Soviet troops, took untold riches from Germany by rail. Experts are still skeptical about this.
“No one, at least from the experts I know, can confirm the information about the train with Nazi gold,” says local historian Joanna Lamparska.
Two men, a Pole and a German, contacted a law office in the Polish city of Walbrzych. They claim that they have found the “golden train” and can show the location of the find, but only for the remuneration required by law. As one of the indirect evidence, treasure hunters reported the length of the train - 150 meters.
“We have received a letter in which a law firm representing the interests of two people, a Pole and a German, states that these people discovered a German train, which in 1944 was heading towards Walbrzych, but did not reach its final destination. The letter makes demands for payment of 10% of the contents of the find. So we can assume that these people know what is inside," says city administration representative Marika Tokarska.
The story of an armored train carrying valuable cargo was first voiced by a local miner in 2003. He said that he knew about the existence of a secret tunnel leading to the ancient castle of Kschenz. An entire underground city was built here in the 40s of the last century. There is speculation that this was one of Hitler's secret bunkers. There is little left of him. But if you look for the “golden train,” then somewhere in the labyrinths of the dungeon. And the two treasure hunters may have known where to go.
“They are not treasure hunters, they were not trying to attract attention to themselves. These are very experienced people who know the area very well,” says lawyer Jaroslav Szmielewski.
Among local searchers there is an opinion that at least one of the treasure hunters has special knowledge about the German train, that this person is too informed about the specific route of the train.
“This is either fiction, or they received information directly from the Germans. Perhaps one of them is a descendant of those who participated in the operation to transport the gold,” believes searcher Krzystov Sprakowski.
The story is full of rumors. Locals they are already talking about 300 tons of gold, neatly packed in armored wagons, about precious stones and rare works of art. But great hopes No one expects that search work will begin in Kszczęzh Castle and its environs. Despite the possible jackpot, a 10% fee to treasure hunters has not yet been promised. The authorities are not ready to carry out expensive work for budget money.